


I watched our bodies turn to ghosts;

by Dashin



Category: Kingdom Hearts (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, M/M, No spoilers really though?, Post-KHIII, mentions of injury but nothing explicit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 18:00:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28311267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dashin/pseuds/Dashin
Summary: For Exe.
Relationships: Ephemer/Vanitas (Kingdom Hearts)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 7





	I watched our bodies turn to ghosts;

**Author's Note:**

> My Secret Santa gift for a member of the most ridiculous Discord server I've ever been a part of. I've read through this so many times that the words have stopped having any meaning whatsoever. 
> 
> I hope you like it, Exe, and Merry Christmas!
> 
> Title from Lauren Aquilina's Fools.

He should be happy.

A part of him knows this, and yet all the years he spent being told that the good feelings were actually bad are really a lot more difficult to overwrite than he thinks any of them quite understands. Riku might have understood, _maybe_ , if he weren’t so wrapped up in his own useless, annoying _pining_ , and Vanitas doesn’t bother to resist the sneer that crosses his face at the thought.

Not that he would have ever brought it up in the first place, of course, because everyone just seems to assume he isn’t capable of feeling the broader spectrum of human emotion. Once upon a time he might have agreed with them.

Vanitas should be happy, and he almost suspects that a part of him _is_ —but it’s just as likely that that part is all _Ven_. All wishful thinking, hopeless romantic Ven. Which...isn't _bad_ , really, but it feels a bit dishonest to be using someone else's emotions to tell him how _he_ should be feeling. Isn't he just supposed to... _know?_

But of course, nothing is ever that easy.

He’d chosen the Jungle because it wasn’t an unpleasant place to be. The only memories he has of the world are ones skimmed from Sora’s mind, moments seen through multiple layers of time and distance that remind him of what he imagines it might be like to look through a foggy window at something he _should_ have, but doesn't. It’s almost— _almost—_ like he’s seeing it all for the first time, and for once that ‘almost’ is small enough to enjoy it. Maybe.

It is a new world to the Unversed, too, tucked away somewhere far enough they’d never had reason to venture. The few that came with him, that bleed out from under his skin, are small fry. They still rush off into the underbrush like excited puppies, and he doesn't bother resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

He's in the midst of exploring his way through the old treehouse when he feels one of his Floods die.

 _Twice_.

It takes him longer than it should, to figure out what that means.

When he appears through one of his portals, it's to the sharp end of a Keyblade in his face. Resisting the trigger finger that desperately wants to call Void Gear in response, Vanitas forces himself to look past the Keyblade to the wielder on the other end of it.

And then he starts to laugh.

* * *

A strange sense of duty, of obligation, had him in the room at all. Curiosity keeps him here. Someone—probably Ven—had called Aqua when they'd arrived, both unsteady on their feet but Ephemer clearly the worse between them. The castle in Radiant Garden is still much more a place of science than of comfort, but at least it was a near guarantee that there would be _someone_ around that knew how to deal with... _this._

In retrospect, he probably should have called first. Or something. This isn't exactly a _normal_ situation, even for him, and he'd been a little distracted at the time, running mostly on instinct and a distinct sense of _what the fuck_. It should be a surprise to no one that he’s _around_ , but being around and actually being _in someone’s line of sight_ , he’s discovered, are very different things.

Vanitas leans silently against the wall, trying very hard not to feel like the impostor he very much is. It’s a good thing Aqua takes her duties so seriously, because if she didn’t he rather thinks she might like to be going after _him_ —again—rather than focusing on the careful Cure spells she’s currently setting into Ephemer’s skin. The silver-haired boy already looks better than he had when they’d arrived, smiling and even giving the occasional low chuckle in response to something Ven says, none of it within Vanitas’ earshot.

Time and again he finds his gaze straying back to Ephemer, no matter how many times he wrenches it away to stare at the bay of computer terminals at the other end of the room, or at Riku at Sora in the doorway, arguing with lowered voices that still manage to carry at least as far as Vanitas, if only in the form of a quiet murmur. Clearly no one knows what they're supposed to do about this, about the dull ache he can still feel raked over his ribs in the same place Ephemer had sported a wound of his own until a few minutes ago.

Eventually, his luck runs out and Ephemer catches his gaze, holding it with an inscrutable expression on his face. Pure stubbornness keeps Vanitas looking back and in the end it’s Ephemer who looks away first, attention diverted by Ven leaning in close as he argues gently with Aqua—and Vanitas never believed those two words could go together the way they do with Ventus, his fierce intensity somehow offset by the way he never seems to get truly angry. The cynic in him knows the blond is doubtless defending him against Aqua’s distrust, but for once the Master’s wariness falls flat in the face of everything else in his head.

 _Soulmate_ was never a term Vanitas had thought to place next to his own perception of himself, assuming that at best he might have ended up sharing that with Ven. There were all kinds of soulmates, after all, and it would have made _sense_. At worst—and even this might not have been so bad—he would end up just...never finding one. Never finding _the_ one, because that half of their collective whole belonged to Ven.

That would have been alright.

But it isn’t reality, the truth for once being preferable to what sensible answers would have called for. Vanitas doesn’t know Ephemer from the proverbial Adam beyond what he knows of him from Ven, and yet finds himself itching to change that, to chase everyone else out and just _be there_. He doesn’t have to _know_ him to know that when the silence is eventually broken, it’ll be Ephemer. Vanitas is so far from having any idea what he’s supposed to do here, so caught up in his own head about all the possibilities, all the ways this could go wrong (usually because of his own failings) that he hardly notices Ven, quietly ushering the others out of the room, stubbornly relentless in the face of Aqua’s reluctance.

He does not miss the encouraging thumbs-up Ventus gives both of them around the edge of the door, nor the way that both of their eyes immediately meet as soon as the door clicks shut behind Ven’s retreating form.

* * *

**Author's Note:**

> Mosquitas courtesy of Nic, who hates me for asking for it but I couldn't NOT.


End file.
